IN MALE-DOMINATED KOREA, AN ISLAND OF SEXUAL EQUALITY

ON certain mornings when the winds are right, the work songs of the haenyo, the diving women, waft upward from the rocky shores to the cliffs of Cheju Do, an island 60 miles south of the South Korean mainland.

They sing to the Dragon King who rules the sea, imploring him to bring their boats back safely, heavy with abalone. They dance in wet suits, raising their shoulders, sunburned hands slapping the insides of well-muscled thighs.

Honeymoon season is upon the 700-square-mile island, a provincial playground of beaches, mountains, caves and waterfalls no more than an hour by plane from the political clamors of Seoul and Pusan. Even in these troubled times young couple still converge by the hundreds on a dozen modern ocean-front hotels amid the volcanic stone and the thatched huts of the island's 400,000 farmers and fishers.

The couples almost never go home without pausing on the gusty cliff overlooking Dragon Head Rock to pose for photographs in their wedding finery. The winds catch the soft skirts of the brides' traditional chima-chogori, making them float like butterflies of intense pink. Sometimes the haenyo can be heard singing on the beaches below. Not that the honeymooners seem to be listening.

Some couples know the story of Cheju, a society of women who work and men who stay home to care for children. But now, they say, is hardly the time to dwell on it. ''We are in our own world, you see,'' said Chung Won Dal as his bride struggled to keep her chima-chogori from turning into a parachute.

The island intrigues social scientists, though. Growing numbers of anthropologists, sociologists, folklorists, economists and others are studying the centuries-old history of the haeyno, which, they say, has been marred in recent years by a series of setbacks: the divers' own dwindling ranks, their economic exploitation by male-dominated fishing associations, and a painful muscular condition caused by the wet suits they have been using for the last decade that has made them dependent on, and occasionally addicted to, painkilling drugs.

In the 1960's the number of divers on the island was estimated at 30,000. This year a survey by the provincial government found only 6,637 haeyno still diving. More than half were 30 to 49 years old, and most others were 50 or older.

Kim Kyong Sung, the 58-year-old descendant - probably the last - of a long line of haeyno, said that even the world's largest abalone would not induce her daughter to dive today.

As a bride, the diver recalled, she asked the sea god for a baby girl. The request was common among the island's young haeyno, but rare on the mainland. When the baby girls arrived, they would soon wade into the water.

''My daughter was a diver,'' Mrs. Kim said. ''Now she is a farmer. Working on a citrus farm is easier than working under the sea for five, six hours. It pays more, too.''

Despite their shrinking numbers, Mrs. Kim and other haeyno bring in 90 percent of the island's shellfish and edible seaweed. They are also a big tourist attraction. Not that the cartoonish ceramics at souvenir stands or the sea nymphs in the travel brochures look anything like the sturdy haeyno.

As concern mounts about the future of the haeyno, so does evidence that their contributions go far beyond the economic. Sociologists say that in their centuries of work to support their families - mainly in the seas, but on land as well - the haeyno have helped to shape a society like no other in modern South Korea.

To judge by some studies, family relationships on the island are a model of sexual equality, compared with those on the mainland where the honeymooners will begin married life.

Today, nearly four decades after the Constitution of South Korea decreed equality between the sexes, Confucian customs based on male supremacy linger, even in large urban centers. In Seoul, women's rights advocates complain that girls are still being trained to obey three men - father, husband and eldest son - and that the eldest son's wife is still expected to live with her husband's family and perform the household chores.

Not surprisingly, the long-suffering bride and her demanding mother-in-law are stock soap opera characters. The tensions portrayed are real, said Dr. Lee Tai Young, the first woman in the country to become a lawyer. She is the founder of a legal aid clinic for families as well as a school for mothers-in-law, to promote harmony among the generations.

''In many homes today,'' she said, ''three generations live under one roof, with all the attendant strains. Anyone who looks into the inner room of a typical house will quickly see that the elderly mother-in-law, younger daughter-in-law relationship is the most difficult.''

If such strains exist on Cheju Do, researchers said they are not apparent. In a study of the island's kinship organization Dr. Choi Jaesok, a sociology professor, found that the dominant family form was the nuclear model - a couple and their unmarried children. Even married eldest sons do not live with parents.

Grandparents live apart. Only those living in the same village as their children expect help from the younger generation. While the island family could not be termed matriarchal, Dr. Choi said a husband's power in making domestic decisions is ''weaker'' and joint decisions by husband and wife are ''highly valued.''

Yet the island's divorce rate is the country's highest. Many islanders divorce and remarry at least once, according to the kinship study, and divorces initiated by wives rather than husbands are common.

Dr. Kim Yang Soon, a home economics professor, was reflecting on the independence of island women as she drove her car past citrus farms and a field of golden rape plants toward a haeyno village.

''We have a saying here, '' she said. '' 'A woman can dive and farm and live by herself, but a man cannot do without a woman.' ''

As she passed a group of women weeding garlic, Dr. Kim pointed out the tiny cradles beside them. As they worked, the mothers swung the cradles with one foot, humming to the babies.

''It is sometimes said that men here are lazy,'' Dr. Kim said with a shrug. ''You'll notice that we haven't seen any men working out here today. All we see are men sitting under the trees and smoking.''

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A version of this article appears in print on July 9, 1987, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: IN MALE-DOMINATED KOREA, AN ISLAND OF SEXUAL EQUALITY. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe